He started war in Iraq. Could U.S. President George W. Bush be a narcissist?
Credit: US govt
PARIS, 22 June 2006 - Scientists have provided evidence to back suspicions that men who are over-confident and narcissistic are the likeliest to start wars - but are also the likeliest to lose.
U.S. researchers recruited 200 men and women in an unusual experiment aimed at exploring whether a bias towards optimism may drive a leader to start a war.
The volunteers were asked to play a one-on-one computer game.
Each played the role of the head of a fictitious country that is in conflict with a neighbour over a vast field of diamonds on a disputed border.
Players were each given US$20 for taking part, but earned an additional bounty of US$10 per game if they won, either by amassing the most wealth or by defeating their opponent.
Before the game, each player was asked to rank himself or herself, predicting how he or she would fare against the 199 others.
Under the game, each player was given a virtual treasure chest of 100 million dollars, which they could spend on upgrading their military, investing in industrial infrastructure or keep in reserve as cash.
As the game unfolded, the player was given updates about his opponent's actions and offers.
Players could negotiate deals in which they could get access to the disputed diamonds, thus adding to their wealth, but they also had the option of waging war at any time and without provocation.
Victory in war would be determined by how much they had spent on their military, but there was an element of chance, too - the computer equivalent of a roll of the dice.
More than 1,000 decisions were taken by the players during six rounds of the games. Seventy per cent involved negotiation (something that could be done both during peace and during a war); 20 per cent involved doing nothing; 6 per cent involved fighting; and 4 per cent to make a threat. Wars occurred in almost half of the games.
Individuals who launched unprovoked attacks were more than five times likelier to be a male than female.
And they were big on self-confidence, too. On average, a warmonger ranked himself number 60 out of the 200 players, whereas those who tried to avoid war ranked themselves more humbly, at 75 on average.
Contrary to popular belief, though, testosterone played no part in whether a player decided for war or for peace. The players gave a saliva test before the game, and these showed there was no significant difference in male hormone levels between warmongers and peaceniks.
On the other hand, there was a clear psychological characteristic among the warmongers. After the game, they were given a personality assessment, which found high levels of narcissism among the men - but not among the women.
The researchers, led by Dominic Johnson of Princeton University in New Jersey, publish the study in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Their theory is that humans have a built-in bias towards optimism because it is a survival mechanism. By encouraging hope, called "positive illusions," our distant ancestors could cope with adversity, strengthen their resolve and bluff their opponents.
But the question is when "positive illusions" become over-confidence - and the impact that this can have in modern-day society, on a president or a prime minister who believes that a war, despite its risks, can be won quickly and easily.
Ironically, the higher the self-ranking, the lower the actual performance, Johnson's team found.
"Those who expected to do best tended to do worst," the paper says. "This suggests that positive illusions were not only misguided, but actually may have been detrimental to performance."
